


Guilt and Silence and Birthdays

by HathorAroha



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Drabble Series, Drabbles, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-22
Updated: 2020-01-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:07:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22355338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HathorAroha/pseuds/HathorAroha
Summary: Max's guilt over falling silent and never contacting Chloe since William's death does not abate over the intervening birthdays, increasingly convinced Chloe would never forgive her, until a fateful golden hour in October 2013.[A drabble series [7 total].)NB: Archive of our Own's word count thing is slightly off--there's definitely 700 words total.
Relationships: Maxine "Max" Caulfield/Chloe Price
Comments: 1
Kudos: 18





	Guilt and Silence and Birthdays

**Author's Note:**

> This is following the traditional, old thing of drabbles being exactly 100 words each, so therefore seven drabbles, 700 words following Max from her thirteenth to one month after her eighteenth. AO3 probably will do this weird thing of showing more or less words in the total count, but I trust Google docs (and my eyes and obsessive counting and re-counting). Definitely 700 words in here. :)

Thirteen. 

Max lies on her bed, thumbs hovering over her cellphone, trying to get up the nerve to text or call Chloe. She bites her lip, fingers frozen in the agony of wanting to  _ say something, just anything _ , knowing nothing she can say will bring Chloe’s dad back nor undo Chloe’s last words to her. Chloe never lied, even in the heat of the moment. She hated Max for abandoning her, she said so herself. 

Max gives up, dumps her cellphone on the floor, and curls up into a ball, arms hugging her knees, hiding her tears from the world. 

* * *

Fourteen. 

Her first birthday in seven years where Chloe isn’t around to celebrate it with her. Max had tried again to text Chloe the moment she’d woken up, opening up her pitiable list of contacts--basically mom, dad, some new girl called Kristin in her English class, and Chloe. She aches to reach out to her, and she just  _ can’t.  _ But she  _ wants  _ to. And yet, still, Chloe’s last words haunt her, the stings still fresh in Max’s heart. 

_ Maybe she really does hate me after all. _

Her fourteenth comes and goes. 

Silence. 

_ I deserve it. I deserve all of this. _

* * *

Fifteen. 

Max throws herself into everything she can to distract herself from thoughts of Chloe. One day, she goes to hockey with her dad, and it  _ works _ . The next few days, she is buzzing so much from the game she forgets about Chloe. 

Until she spots a girl on the street who looks so much like Chloe she does a double-take. 

_ Chloe?  _

But this girl has gentle brown eyes, not Chloe’s blazing blue. 

_ Chloe’s doing okay. She has to be.  _

Small comfort, but it was all Max had to stop herself thinking about Chloe, stop that old twinge of guilt. 

* * *

Sixteen. 

When Max starts driving lessons with her parents, she tries not to think about how one day she’d be able to drive all the way to Arcadia Bay on her own, just to see if Chloe’s okay.

_ She’s strong. She’s brave.  _

Chloe would have been learning to drive by now too.

_ Maybe she’ll come to Seattle. Surprise me. Unless I do it first.  _

As if. Chloe was the opposite of her-- _ she  _ would spontaneously go on an unplanned road trip, not Max.  _ She  _ would be the one to surprise her. 

Not likely to happen, not after all of Max’s silence. 

* * *

Seventeen. 

She hasn’t  _ completely  _ stopped thinking about Chloe, not really. But she finds memories of her creeping into corners of her life in unexpected ways. Her parents make her pancakes for her seventeenth, and the memory of  _ that  _ morning haunts her, and she excuses herself from the table, pancakes left uneaten. When her science teacher talks about chemistry and periodic tables and physics and planets and evolution and biology--she thinks of Chloe, how much she would  _ love  _ these science classes. 

_ Chloe would totally have helped me with this homework. I don’t get any of this.  _

If only Chloe were here. 

* * *

Eighteen. 

Here she is, in Arcadia Bay, all alone on her own birthday. Wasn’t eighteen supposed to be the start of a happy entrance to adulthood? She didn’t feel remotely like an adulthood;  _ au contraire _ , deep down, she was still that anxious, shy thirteen year old kid. 

_ Suckiest birthday ever.  _

She deserved silence from Chloe on her own eighteenth. It wasn’t like Max had ever wished her a happy birthday either since 2008. 

_ She’s probably forgotten anyway.  _

But even if Chloe had forgotten her birthday, let alone even thought about her anymore, Max still remembered hers. 

_ I swear, I’ll call.  _

* * *

Eighteen years, one month. 

It’s so awkward being back at Chloe’s, and Max isn’t convinced she’s forgiven her at all. The tiny tools from the garage slip and slide as Max attempts to fix her broken camera. 

After ten minutes, it’s clear: there’s no saving the camera. Or their long broken friendship. 

Chloe ambles over, asks to see Max’s new photos. She recognises the butterfly at once. And then Chloe knows it was  _ Max  _ who saved her.

_ Doesn’t mean she’ll forgive me. _

But then Chloe gives her William’s old camera. Insists Max keeps it. 

_ Maybe she’ll forgive me after all. _

  
  



End file.
